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I am pleased to announce that the final version of Guadalinex v6 is out

The official news are at the Guadalinex website. But it’s in Spanish, so I’ve decided to explain a bit (in my poor English) what is all about.

Before to start I like to thank to all those people who help to develop, test, fix, translate and document all those great projects which Guadalinex is based on. I really do. They make this possible and deserve most of the credits.

This is the 6th edition of Guadalinex which is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu. The distribution is paid by the local government of a big region at the south of Spain, which is Andalusia.

There are a lot of people who think this is waste of public money, but I think quite the opposite. And I think so because we don’t just make Ubuntu booting in Spanish and change the wallpaper, we try to listen to real end users from this region of the world and bring them the closer system to what they need and demand.

The distribution is oriented to the regular citizen, but it is being used at schools for few years. Thousands of children have been using Guadalinex (ergoUbuntu/Debian/Gnome and much more free software stuff) everyday at the schools for about four years now.

But also people from very low populated areas of Andalusia have been using Guadalinex at centers with computers where they can learn computers skills and use internet for free. Now there are around 700 centers working from Monday to Friday for them.

Even the public libraries are using now Guadalinex.

Because of that, Guadalinex is more than a few technical or artistic changes. It’s a social project.

I think the changes we have made in this version are useful no just for Andalusian, but for all the people who feels more comfortable reading and writing in Spanish. And there also some interesting stuff for a normal Ubuntu user.

We like to push those improvements to Ubuntu, Debian, GNOME and all the wonderful projects we touch. And also new small tools we develop because our users need them. We think those are also useful for everybody.

I have to say that Guadalinex don’t try to compete with any distro. Guadalinex have its owns users with their needs and we just want to give them what they need. And in the process (if we can) to help the community and other people.

Our goals are really different from Ubuntu’s ones. Ubuntu need to be for everyone. Need to be universal and be useful and “compatible” with every person and culture.

We are the opposite. We need to target to specific people, with specific language, culture, needs and resources. That’s why Ubuntu is so useful for us, but Guadalinex is more useful for our users.

We have to deal with users who barely know how to write and know nothing about computers. Ok, we have also real good IT people or people who really know all this stuff, but our threshold is the user who less know.

We like fancy things on our desktops but sometimes we have to wait a bit to get them into Guadalinex because our users aren’t ready for them. And we know because we have professional helpdesk services, forums, feedback from teachers, from our technicians at the tele centers. So it’s not something we figure out by ourself and then take “conservatives” decisions, it’s something we do, because we know well to our users and we are here for them.

What I was trying to say is that Ubuntu (or any other generalist distribution) has a very important mission and there are a lot of smaller and more focused derivatives distributions that need to be there. This is an ecosystem and everyone grown and learn on this interaction.

Sorry for been so tedious, I’ll promise to tell shorter and funnier stories next time

Well, actually my next post probably will be the list of things that are different between Ubuntu Jaunty and Guadalinex v6. The list is in Spanish now, so I want to explain it in English.

This is a short post just to say hello to everybody at the Ubuntu Planet
I’ve been around Ubuntu since its first version (back in the 2004) and now my work got me closer again to Ubuntu, so I’ve decided become a member of this community and start my process of developer in here.

I was always a very Debian guy, but for different reasons I found Ubuntu interesting and a project that I had to keep eye on. I still like Debian, but I use Ubuntu for my work and my home (well, actually I use Guadalinex).

I hope my work let me keep pushing bugs, translations, patches, branches and more no just to Ubuntu but Debian, GNOME and more interesting projects out there that we use.
That’s it for now. Soon, some news about the last Guadalinex version. Stay tuned

I still have an hangover from the last week. I was at Barcelona from Monday to Friday at the Karmic UDS (Ubuntu Developer Summit).

This is a great event for all those who are interested on knowing how Ubuntu works, but it’s basically oriented to those who are Ubuntu developers or from any of its derivatives distributions (like Guadalinex, which is my case). I think the event is interesting, in general, for any hacker and developer from upstream projects or just people nearby the Ubuntu world, because there is a lot of interesting people from Ubuntu, but also from upstream or derivative projects sharing knowledge and experiences to improve the next version of Ubuntu.

One topic that is always on the table (in many ways) is how to be better FLOSS citizens. I mean, how to do the things in the better way to give back to upstream projects all the improvements they do. And also to give the merit from each thing to its real author, from upstream, from Ubuntu or from the community.
I know (they know as well) that it isn’t always like that and some people from different project complain about that. But I truly believe this is an issue that is very important to them and they try to do their best. But to drive this is not very easy task and take some time.

I’ve been in four UDS (Mataró, Sidney, Seville and this one in Barcelona) and is getting better. The thing I like the most is that after the UDS you know there is a lot of work already done and almost every discussion and conclusion written down. You have a very clear concept about what is going on in the next release, how is going to be approached and who is going to be involved in the task to get them done.

I’ve been in a lot of different kind of FLOSS congress, seminars, summits and so for more the seven years and this is one that I like especially. Mostly because I feel it very productive. In a lot of congress, talks and workshop somebody talk about something you already know (or likely you don’t) everybody feel that could be interesting they talk a lot but when everybody come back to their homes (or a week later) everyone come back to their projects, work and real life and that it. In the UDSs, at least, you got after the event has finished a bunch of specifications, already discussed, with good feedback from different people, tasks in order to get it done and people with those task assigned.

I don’t know. The event is not perfect, it’s not the only way to do the things, but IMHO is very pragmatic and good way to do the things.

I really hope the next GCDS (Gran Canaria Desktop Summit) leave me the same good feeling after it’ll have finished. I know the GCDS is going to be great, but I hope after the event we have some real tasks and aims to follow to get the best for our free desktops.
Anyway, I know the event is going to be great. People form the both desktops (GNOME and KDE) are working hard for it. Also local teams and people are giving all they can (as Luis would say: “dandolotodo” ;-P ) to get the better cross desktop event ever.

Well, thanks to Canonical and the Ubuntu comunity and developers to give me the opportunity of participate in such of event and try to be useful for Ubuntu and Guadalinex. Also thank to the Junta de Andalucía and my company, Emergya, for cover my travel for being there.
I was especially happy to meet again with Daniel Holdbach and Jorge O. Castro, which are really great persons and very hard workers who push and work a lot for all developers and the community. I’m very sorry for not being able to say good by to them. I left in a hurry and I couldn’t say good bye to a lot of friends.

Another person I met there was David Planella, which is new in Canonical as well, but he isn’t either new in the FLOSS world. He is translator in GNOME, Debian and Ubuntu. And now is the head of the Ubuntu Translations. As far I know he is going to be in charge of the coordination of the Ubuntu translations and the infrastructures around (Rosetta, language-packs and so). He is a really nice guy which seems very implicated and with willing of getting the things working.
I’m especially interested in his area because translations ir one of the biggest issues for Guadalinex and the coordination with him and the Ubuntu translations is very important. We also were talking about help from Guadalinex to test the Spanish translations to be sure the updates don’t break any application in the stables releases (as Jaunty in which is based the last Guadalinex version).

Well this post is long enogh, so I’ll save some thoughts for the next ones

It’s been awhile since the last post. I’ve been a bit busy with Guadalinex and some personal stuff. So here I leave some updates to keep my personal log no so empty…

Parkour:

I’ve got some problems with my back and I had to quit (for a while) with this new passion… Anyway, it was useful because it farce me to go to the doctor make a real check and found old and deeper problems. And what it’s better, it also force me to keep doing some exercise, which is helping me in many ways

Rock Climbing:

I leave parkour by now, but I’ve started to climb walls again. It sounds kind of weird, but this was a previous passion for me and it’s helping me with my back.

Ok, I’m not climbing like I was doing 8 years ago (that was more or less the last time…), but I’ve decided to start slow. Step by step.

I had to much injuries from my previous climbing period. I don’t want to do the same mistakes again.

I found some artificial walls for climbing but I’m actually doing some boulder in “el Puente de Triana” (the Triana bridge), here in Seville. There are always people climbing and people are very nice and open.

I hope soon I will be able to go to some real rock outside of Seville…

This reminds me that in Gran Canaria are really good spots for climbing (also fot others mountain activities) so if anyone who is going to the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit like to know places, let me know. I¡m from there and I know quite well those places. Just let me know before the summit and we can do some excursion or something

Guadalinex:

There is already the Ubuntu Jaunty, the one we use as base to derive. We were quite busy setting up all the building systems, updating our projects for being working on Jaunty and trying to help Ubuntu a bit with translations, bugs and patches.

No so many patches as I would like, but we are very few people and we spend a lot of time learning how Ubuntu works. There is a lots of procedures, documentation, wiki pages, tools, place from where get info… We are still learning, but I thing the next version and collaboration will be much smoother. And we’ll be more useful for them

We have alpha already in the streets and we are close to have a beta, which will be more Guadalinex alike.

Ubuntu Jaunty is a really good base. I have to said that for me is one of the best Ubuntu versions in many ways, so I expect Guadalinex be at least as good as Jaunty.

We’ll change some things from Ubuntu, as the notifications stuff. We like the new notifications but we need interaction on them for one of our main projects: Hermes. And the new notification system doesn’t allow to do any interactions.

By now we’ll deactivate this and we’ll use the standard of GNOME, at least, until the new notification implement some kind of solution for those use cases.

Few days off (offline):

I’ll go tomorrow to Vigo (Galician) until Sunday and I’ll be very offline those days. It’s my first time in Galician and I know I will love it

So many time wanting to go there and just 3 days there… But sure it’s just the FIRST time and not the last

If you don’t know, Guadalinex is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Ubuntu made by La Junta de Andalucia (Andalusian regional Government) for the citizens. It’s one of the main distributions in Spain and has a large amount of users. There are over 300.000 pcs on schools and over 600 internet centers in rural areas running Guadalinex.

This is very exciting for me because, although I’ve already participated on 3 versions of Guadalinex and I’ve helped to create the system in which was based the others first, this is going to be developed in another way.

The previous versions were developed by a few small companies working together. The way those companies were chosen was by a public tender.

This was a good way, I think. Letting to small free software companies work, learn and grown doing software useful for the people around. And the whole process was open. It wasn’t that kind of project that one company develop for few months and then put in a public server. It was always open from the beginning. Open and public wiki, mail lists, subversion, forums, bug tracking and so on. Which sadly is no very common on free software project from governments…

Anyway, this time it was also a tender, but not for making the whole distribution by the companies, just hiring separated groups of people for doing different tasks (design the distro, maintain the mirrors, take care of the users and forums, create a manual for human beings….) from inside. I mean, from the public installations.

Well, my company won the tender for leading part of the technical side of this project. So my coworker and friend Roberto Morano and me are working on Guadalinex v6 since the last Monday

Guadalinex always has been trying to collaborate with the upstream projects, like the distribution on which were based (first Debian, now Ubuntu). But it wasn’t easy at all.

We have our schedule, few resources, usually we start to work on an already stable version (which means we can not add or fix things for that upstream version) and too much burocracy some times. Also the upstream distro side was never clear and we couldn’t find a middle point to collaborate.

We actually did collaborate with Ubuntu with the first version of the live installer (Ubuntu Express, now Ubiquity), some fixes, translations and few things more. But there was a lot of interesting stuff we created for Guadalinex and never arrived to Ubuntu. That’s sad.

Also, since we got a huge amount of computers running Guadalinex and we must assure those computers work fine (because the child and teachers need them for the classes, for example), we have a lot of bugs and hardware issues notificated and we already have fixed lots of different kind of problem (hardware support, 3g support, digital certificates support, etc).

I know very well that all the people behind the project would like to push all those improvements to upstream and give to more people. But the time, the tools, the language and things like that didn’t let us doing properly.

But, good news, now we are getting close to a better collaboration. We have started to integrate subprojects from Guadalinex on Launchpad, so we can show to the Ubuntu community (and nearby ones) all the things we do. We are creating the projects on launchpad and importing the subversion repositories into bazaar branches registered on lp, as well.

We also add our bug tracker to the list of bug tracker connected to launchpad, so we can connect the bugs we share and give feedback from each other or even close our bugs and notificate the fixes to the related bugs or software in Ubuntu.

People from the launchpad team are helping us with this because the bug tracker we use since more than 3 years (mantis) is not the better supported by launchpad, so we are figuring how sort this out. We’ll see.

Also there is a Guadalinex distro registration about to finish, so we can manage the releases, milestones and subprojects as a normal distro in launchpad.

We are asking to the launchpad and ubuntu people how to doing better so they can take our work and we are open to any idea or recommendation.

Our initial goal is release the stable version between 30 and 60 days after Jaunty and for this version we don’t plan add much new features, like on earlier versions. Instead, we’ll try to help to fix bugs, improve translations, documentation and hardware support, so we can get a better, more stable and more secure upstream distro.

As said before, any help, advise, recommendation will be more than welcome.

I’ve just discover Gwibber and I found it very nice and useful. It’s a microblogging client for GNOME which support twitter, identi.ca, facebook, fickr, rss and much more. It use webkit and is quite eye candy.
The problem is webkit is not very well supported on Ubuntu Hardy, which means neither on Guadalinex v5.